


Angle of Attack

by Sineala



Series: Changeling [3]
Category: Avengers (Comics), Marvel (Comics), Marvel 616
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Amnesia, Angst, Avengers Vol. 4 (2010), Cap-Ironman Bingo, Community: cap_ironman, Flying, Gen, M/M, Memory Loss, POV Outsider, holy shit what's happened to Tony?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-27
Updated: 2015-09-27
Packaged: 2018-04-23 14:00:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4879558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sineala/pseuds/Sineala
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carol and Tony test inventions, dine al fresco, and discuss several things Tony no longer remembers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Angle of Attack

**Author's Note:**

> This story is third in a Siege/World's Most Wanted canon-divergent AU series and will probably make very little sense without having read the first two.
> 
> Thanks to [kalashia](http://archiveofourown.org/users/kalashia) and [runningondreams](http://archiveofourown.org/users/runningondreams) for beta.
> 
> This is a fill for Cap-IM Bingo, the square "injury/illness."

The world's been upside down since they lost Tony.

Carol thinks maybe she should stop thinking of it as _lost_. That makes it sound like he's dead. He's alive, and as far as amnesiac superheroes go he's not even the worst they've seen, depending on how you define it. He's still got memories. He knows he's Tony Stark, but he just doesn't remember Iron Man. Just. Just half his adult life, sliced out of him like hitting the delete key and losing everything in the file. No backups.

She's not really dealing well with this.

If it were just Tony, she might be able to cope, as awful as it sounds. But it's like they've lost Steve with him too, Steve who they just got back, and that's hitting her hard. That's hitting everyone hard. She doesn't think either of them have noticed. They haven't noticed anything other than themselves. Or each other.

It's the strangest thing, though -- their reactions are _reversed_.

She's known Steve for years, and she knows how Steve deals with adversity: he plants his feet, grits his teeth, sets his jaw, and punches his way through. He's the most stubborn person Carol has ever met. And if sheer bloody-minded stubbornness isn't enough to see him through the situation, he sulks. He sulks and he stews and it all comes out of him in anger, in violence, because he's got a hell of a temper. It's not one of his best traits, but they're all of them human, the Avengers. Even Steve Rogers, even if -- especially if -- he's trying to live up to the flag they painted on him back in 1940. He tries to keep it in, but eventually -- well, back when they had the mansion Carol knew to avoid the gym when Steve stomped off. When he was done there'd be bags broken and equipment strewn about, always set right without a word the next day. But she'd never seen him take it out on anything other than inanimate equipment or anyone who wasn't some fiendish cackling supervillain. Not until the SHRA. Not until Tony.

God, she wishes she'd never seen that last fight. She wishes it had never happened. They'd been best friends for a decade, and Steve was ready to kill Tony. She'd seen the look in his eyes, and she still gets chills remembering it. Carol knows she can put Steve through a wall if need be, but that doesn't mean that being on the wrong side of Steve Rogers isn't terrifying as hell.

She's only talked to him about the war once, when he figured out why she was staying in the tower with the two of them, because someone who wasn't him needed to be there for Tony, and he'd burst into tears in her arms. Again.

And that's another thing, the crying. She can probably count on one hand the number of times she's ever seen Steve cry in her entire life, before now. But since-- since Tony, since everything happened, she'd need several more hands. He's not yelling. He's not fighting. He's just crying. She'll find him sitting somewhere, staring into space, tears running down his cheeks, like he either doesn't know he's crying or doesn't care enough even to wipe his face.

She wonders if he was like this about Bucky, when the Avengers first found him in the ice. But there's no one to ask. The original Avengers are unavailable (Bruce), being leaned on harder for more important favors than this (Thor), unwilling to speak to a lot of people (Hank), or dead (oh, God, _Jan_ ), and as for Tony-- Tony doesn't know anymore. So she supposes she'll never know either.

But tears are generally Tony's province, is the thing.

Steve bottles up all his feelings until he punches it all out. Tony, well-- Tony gets his feelings all over the place. The Avengers' consensus opinion of Tony, over the years -- always very carefully voiced only when Tony is not present -- is that Tony's _sober_ is drunker than anyone else's _completely wasted_. Tony's free. Free with his words, his thoughts, his opinions, his feelings, his entire self. You know you've made it in the Avengers when the team's hanging out, the tail end of an all-too-infrequent night of relaxation and general merriment, and Tony's flopped his arm over your shoulder and is telling you how _you are a great person_ , yes, you, really, you, yes, he's _so glad to know you_ and he's _so happy you're an Avenger_. All of the Avengers have had that night, that conversation, some more than others. Carol's had that conversation a hell of a lot.

The flip side of Tony's highs, of course, is that Tony's lows are goddamn Hieronymus Bosch _nightmares_. There are tears. There are always, always tears. He's not always naked and crying in alleyways in the rain, but Carol thinks that particular scenario might have happened more than once. At least these days he's not also drunk for it, thank God, although she of all people understands why he might want to be. They used to bond over their goddamn demons. He doesn't remember. Last week he had a beer in his hand and she was the one who had to tell him about his life, because he _didn't know_. And God, she wanted that drink. Thinking about what Tony, the old Tony, would have felt about her doing it is maybe the only thing stopping her from cracking one open and disappearing into the bottle. They used to keep each other sober, but now it's only her. It's not like Steve would stop her. Steve's barely here. Not in any way that counts.

The lowest of lows was when Steve was dead, of course. Tony'd put on the armor and hidden behind it and come apart underneath, sobbing ceaselessly behind all the masks. It had felt like she'd spent the entire year picking him up and dragging him onward because he couldn't stand up alone. They all were, the friends he had left. She used to fly up to the helicarrier to conference with him then, Director Stark of SHIELD, to tell him about the Avengers team he'd handed her, the team that should have been his and Steve's and everyone knew it. She was more than half-convinced that what had kept him from killing himself was knowing what Steve would have thought of it.

And now he's killed himself anyway, in a sense.

At any rate, what she expects from Tony, what she's always expected, is emotion.

She's not getting it.

Everything in him is locked up tight, mask as solid as if he were still wearing the armor, more solid than when he actually was, and she used to be able to tell when he was bleeding but she can't, she can't, she can't. He's not letting her in. No tears. No nothing. They could be strangers. To him, they are.

_Are you dying inside?_ she wants to scream at him over dinner, when he wields his knife and fork with impeccable manners, like he's a guest on his best behavior at someone else's home. _Would you tell me?_

She doesn't even dare visit him in the workshop now. He used to leave the door open. He used to show off his projects to anyone who asked, full of pride and delight. He lived for it. Now the door's locked and whenever she walks by she can hear him yelling, incoherent, muffled complaints and loud, bitter, obscene invective, amid the clanking of metal and the roar of saws and torches. Whatever he's building there infuriates him.

At least it's a feeling. That's really more of Steve's kind of feeling though. Again with the reversal.

So it's a morning just like any other, their new normal for the last two weeks. The three of them are still the only ones living in the tower; she's not entirely sure why Logan comes by just to keep his beer in the fridge. She supposes he's keeping tabs on them too. They've just concluded another extremely awkward breakfast, where Tony smiles politely and asks Carol to pass him the jam with all of his best table manners, and Steve sits there with his blotchy face and red-rimmed eyes, doing the world's most unconvincing impersonation of a guy who hasn't been crying since he woke up, and Carol wants to yell _everything about this is wrong_.

Steve and Tony have since disappeared separately to God-knows-where, and Carol is sitting here in the empty common area trying to put together a new team because it's not like anyone else is. She's had tentative interest from a lot of people, but only tentative, and she knows she's not the person who needs to be doing this. Everyone looks to Steve. Everyone expects it to be Steve. (Or Tony, but everyone knows by now it can't be.) But Steve took some kind of security job, "America's top cop," something she'd thought was SHIELD business -- Maria had said it was somehow affiliated -- and he's shown no interest in assembling the Avengers. He wouldn't even talk to Bucky when he was here last week.

Carol sighs in frustration and pages through the list again. There has to be someone who would say yes when it's not Steve or Tony asking. She resists the impulse to call Jess and ask her if she wants to go thwart petty theft in the Bronx today, even though punching small-time crooks sounds really satisfyingly good right about now. (It's not like she doesn't understand violence as stress relief, after all.)

Then the comm beeps.

"Carol?" Tony asks. The way he says her name now, it's like he's asking her permission to call her it. He sounds hesitant, unsure. "Can you-- I finished a thing, and I wanted someone to spot me and I was wondering if you might-- well, I'm in the workshop."

He didn't actually manage to ask the question, but Carol smiles, even though the call is voice-only. "Sure," she says. "Of course. I'll be right down."

* * *

She wonders on the way down what the hell Tony's done that needs _spotting_ and why he asked her and not Steve, but the answer is apparent the instant he opens the workshop door for her.

Tony's wearing armor.

It's one of Tony's older models, the one he always likes to return to when something's fucked up with the latest and greatest. His legs and arms are coated in skin-tight golden metal; the boots, gauntlets, and chestplate are the familiar bulky, striated pieces, crimson and gleaming. He has the helmet tucked under his arm and a wavering smile on his face; his expression is a combination of _look what I did!_ and _oh shit, what have I done?_

"I didn't want to ask Cap-- Steve," he says, quietly, almost sheepishly. "I didn't want to get his hopes up. He seems kind of. Kind of." He just leaves the sentence there, and Carol can fill in the intent.

"Yeah," she says, on a sigh. "He is."

He lets her inside and she steps around him in a circle, taking it in. He looks -- well, he looks just like she remembers. Exactly like the old Tony, until you see his face.

"This is the Model 4," Tony informs her. "I didn't build it entirely from scratch. Maria had left me this one." He sounds more confident saying her name, because she's not superhuman: he remembers her. "It was a bit of work though, taking out weapons capability. Had to make some physical modifications and rewrite a bit of code. I didn't think, with everything, that I should. Have weapons, I mean." His voice trails off. "Do you like it?"

She isn't really sure how to answer that. It's what they all wanted, Tony in the suit again, but he isn't going to be the one they wanted flying it. Somewhere she wants to believe that when he armored up it would be magical, bringing all the memories back. But there are no easy fixes, and the Tony in the armor doesn't know anything he didn't before.

"It's great." She smiles. "How's flying treating you?"

Tony grimaces. "That's-- I haven't. That was what I wanted a spotter for."

She's positive Tony wouldn't have been so safety-conscious in his past life; on the other hand, she suspects that accidentally deleting half his memories might have given him a new appreciation for protocol.

She glances up. it's a high ceiling. Plenty of clearance.

"You got one." She infuses her voice with enough confidence for both of them, because someone in this tower has to be the not-broken one and she guesses it's got to be her. "Fire it up."

Tony swallows hard, and that's when she realizes he's _afraid_ , and that just kills her, because there is something so fundamentally unfair and wrong about a universe that would steal from Tony the knowledge that there is nothing better than flight.

She plucks the helmet out of his hands and he blinks. "I don't need...?"

"I've seen you fly without the helmet," she assures him. "Besides, I'm sure this version has manual controls, doesn't it?"

He nods, swallows again, and shifts his feet so his stance is a little wider. His hands are at his sides, and he raises his wrists until his palms are parallel to the ground. He's ready.

He looks at her.

He doesn't move.

There's sweat beading on his forehead, and he's several shades paler than before.

"Tony," she says, and he stares right through her, not even tracking. "Tony," she repeats. "You're thinking too hard."

His eyes snap to meet hers. "What?"

"You're thinking too hard," she repeats. "You've worn this suit for years. Your brain doesn't remember, but your body does."

A wave of pain tightens his features and is gone. She has no idea what that's about. "Yeah," he says, hoarsely. "Muscle memory. I-- I know. It-- it feels right. Wearing this." His voice is low, like admitting this shames him.

She smiles as encouragingly as she can. "So don't think. Just _do_. It's not like I think about what I do with my body when I fly. It just happens."

Tony stares at her. "You _fly_?" he asks, wide-eyed and awed.

Fuck.

She'd assumed he'd known, but who would have told him? She didn't. Apparently no one else did either. He doesn't know anything. He couldn't have known, but somehow it just didn't click in her head that he has fucking _amnesia_ now. There's a hot lump in her throat. This is why Steve has been a wreck since Oklahoma. This is what Steve has been trying to tell her. The worst thing isn't just that Tony doesn't know them, it's when you start to think he does -- when you get your hopes up for an instant, when you didn't even realize you were getting your hopes up -- and then Tony says something that means he doesn't know anything at all and he's staring at you like you stepped out of a comic book and you're nothing to him but a hero. Never a friend.

Her smile now is probably much more watery. "Yeah," she manages. "Yeah, I fly."

She takes a step backward and then pushes herself into the air, floating a few feet above the ground, bobbing a little. It's not the most graceful she's ever been.

Tony's staring up at her, open-mouthed and awed, like he's never seen her do that a thousand times, and she kind of wants to die.

But she smiles again, instead.

"Come on," she says. "The air's better up here."

Tony looks up at her and his face transforms into that set, determined expression that Carol has seen too many times to count, the face that says _Avengers, assemble_. It's the way he looks in the minutes before the battle begins, just before he slides the helmet down. Before they win.

And then the boot jets fire, and the repulsors fire, and Tony rises, lifting off in a wobbling, unsteady arc. His eyes widen at first but then gradually narrow. He remembers this, she knows. Somewhere, somehow, he remembers this.

He laughs, an amazed, joyful sound. He hasn't laughed. Not since he's been here.

"Hey," he says, like he's trying a new food and it's _delicious_. "This is pretty good!"

"Told you so," Carol returns, grinning at him, and she dances back out of the way when he swoops toward her. Even though the ceilings are high, it's still close quarters, and Tony has to fling his hands up to to stop himself before he hits the wall.

He whoops jubilantly and lets himself settle to the ground. He's still grinning.

"Wow," he says, and he shakes his head ruefully. "I got to do that _every day_?"

She lands next to him. "Just about."

Tony's smile goes a little faint. "I must have been really lucky, huh?"

_We were lucky to know you_ , she doesn't say, because he's still here and still alive and they do know him, he's just-- it's complicated.

"So," she says instead, "how about going on a flight with me? There's fewer walls to hit outside."

A furrow appears between Tony's brows. "Outside?"

She wonders if he's thinking _what if I fall?_ or _what if everyone sees me?_ and honestly, both of those are pretty horrifying thoughts to come from Tony.

"You're Tony Stark," she tells him. "You can fly anywhere you damn well please." She nearly called him _Iron Man_. He used to find that heartening. She doesn't think he does anymore. "And I can still spot you. I'm strong," she adds, because if he didn't know she could fly he definitely doesn't know about anything else. "If it comes to that, I can catch you."

The smile on his face is weak, but present, and he swallows again. "Okay." He jerks his head once at the bank of windows. "Now?"

Carol looks down at herself. She's wearing grubby jeans, worn sneakers, and a t-shirt that reads "I SURVIVED THE THING'S SUPERHERO POKER TOURNAMENT 2006." Yeah, no.

"Give me a minute," she says. "I'm not dressed for the occasion."

* * *

Leotard. Mask. Sash. Gloves. Boots. She's set. 

She meets Tony on the launch pad; Tony has the helmet on by the time she gets outside so she can't actually see his face, but he's craning his neck like he's looking dubious about the height. They're ninety-three floors up. He's standing under the shade of one of the great swooping points that make up the top of the tower, walking along the edge of the pad just above where his name is still emblazoned.

"It'll be fine," she tells him. "We're flying, after all. No need to waste time flying up."

He nods firmly. The armor makes it all look firm, she guesses. Maybe that's why Tony likes it so much.

"All right." She's missed hearing his voice through the armor filters, and she wonders if that's weird.

Carol leaps into the sky first, because she thinks it'll be easier if he follows, and then she turns to watch. After a second Tony rises to join her, glowing a familiar blinding blue-white. The take-off is more confident than before, but he's still basically hovering over the landing pad. They haven't gone anywhere yet.

"You good?" she asks.

Tony's starting to hold himself more loosely, more naturally, like he's starting to get the hang of this. "I'm good."

Something's warm and aloft in her heart now, something light and hopeful. She doesn't really remember being hopeful.

She grins at him. "Then come on and catch me!" she calls out, and she raises her fists high and streaks up.

She's curving around the top of Avengers Tower in a lazy spiral, and she can see Tony gaining on her. He's almost within arm's reach, and as he stretches out a hand she knows he's flying just like he used to, even if he'll never remember it.

She breaks away and twists in the air, laughing. "Too slow!"

"I'll show you _slow_!" Tony yells back, and oh God, it's just like the old days.

And then they're off. They're darting between skyscrapers, spinning around them at the top, swooping low to street level to whoosh above cars and pedestrians yelling _Look, it's Iron Man! Ms. Marvel and Iron Man!_ and smiling up at them. Carol's not sure which of them is winning, or if it's even a race, but they're flying for the sheer glory of flight.

The wind's in her hair, the sky is a perfect blue above them, and as they sail up the people below grow so small. Carol knows the cliche thought at moments like this is to think of the insignificance of people, but to her it's always made them matter more, seeing everything smaller. _I have to protect this_ , she always thinks. _The world is so fragile_.

They head south, south, south, and chase each other between the sleek buildings of the Financial District, cornering hard. Tony's boot jets reflect off the gleaming facades as they streak past. They've flown far enough that the East River is beneath them, bridge not too far off, and Carol angles back to float vertically and point at it. "Hey, Tony!" she asks. "Want to stop and take a rest?"

"Hell of a photo op," Tony agrees, and that's how they end up sitting on top of one of the towers of the Brooklyn Bridge.

His landing is a little wobbly, but Carol decides not to comment. It's good. It's better than she'd ever dreamed, because for the past two weeks she thought she'd never see it again.

Tony jams two fingers into the release at his chin like he's done it a thousand times, which he probably has, and he wrenches the helmet off. His face is flushed and his hair is standing up in little dark curled spikes. 

"You know," Tony says, sounding thoughtful. "I think this is my first public appearance. Since, well. That."

Chagrined, Carol looks over at him to see how he's taking it; she hadn't exactly thought of that one, but, well, Tony's lived his life in view of the cameras for so long she's assumed he's long since gotten used to it. And, yeah, he looks more or less neutral about it. He's shrugging.

"Sorry I didn't get you an interview first."

He shrugs again. "I've got hundreds of requests piling up for them, apparently." He eases himself onto the concrete, knees drawn up and feet planted, hands at his sides; Carol sits next to him. "Maybe one of these days I'll say yes." He licks his lips. "I kind of like this better though. The flying."

"You always did," she says, very softly, and he smiles another one of those pained smiles.

They're sitting facing Manhattan, facing Avengers Tower, even though it's too far to see from here. But Carol knows where it is anyway, like she can home in on it. She wonders if Tony has that knack too.

Tony tilts his head back to the sky. "Picked a nice day for an outing, at least."

Carol nods. "I feel like we should have packed a picnic lunch."

"Well," Tony says, and he's grinning a familiar crooked grin, "I can't fit a picnic lunch in this thing, but I did read my suit specs while teaching myself how to disarm it. And I believe in preparedness."

He opens a small, flat panel in the side of the armor -- Carol doesn't remember seeing it before -- and there's a money clip and a granola bar. She's a little surprised there isn't a condom or two in there, given, well, Tony, but maybe Tony's decided romancing anyone is a little ambitious in his current state. And it's not like he'd go for her, which is fine by her.

He unwraps the granola bar, breaks it unevenly in two, and offers Carol the bigger piece.

She takes it. It smells like peanut butter chocolate chip. She's sitting on top of the Brooklyn Bridge with her friend Tony Stark, amnesiac, billionaire, engineering genius, and former superhero, and they're eating granola bars. What a life.

Tony frowns. "You're not-- God, you're not allergic to peanuts, are you?"

Carol realized she hasn't eaten it, shakes her head, and pops half the bar in her mouth. "Mmmph," she says. "No. No major allergies. Also I have better-than-average immunity to poisons."

Tony looks impressed. "Anything else I should know about you?"

She holds out a hand. "Give me that granola wrapper."

Bemused, he does.

She pinches it between her fingertips and _charges_ , and the silvery foil disappears, evaporated in a burst of energy and photons, a little light show. "Photonic blasts," she adds. "I like 'em."

"But not as much as flying," Tony says, because he's figured her out, hasn't he?

"Not as much as flying," she agrees.

Carol has another power too, her seventh sense. It's haphazard, not as reliable as Spider-Man's, and -- like Spidey's -- primarily works in combat situations. But she's feeling it now, that prickle on the back of her neck, like lightning down her spine. Tony's got something big to say.

Even braced for it, she's still taken aback when Tony looks over at her, faux-casual, smiles almost grimly, and says, "So how about that superhero Civil War, huh?"

She takes a shuddering breath, hands over her mouth; Tony's watching her, eyes unreadable.

It's not as if not telling him was a conscious decision. It's not as if they arrived at it by mutual agreement. It's not as if they all sat down and said, _well, we better not tell Tony about that_. It just seemed easier not to put it on him, when he didn't even remember being a superhero. How were they supposed to tell him that he and Steve had been trying to kill each other? How were they supposed to tell him that the world had spent a year hating him for things he was never going to remember?

"I don't blame you for not telling me," Tony says, and the gentleness in his voice has to be forced. "I kind of liked it better when I thought my past self wasn't an asshole."

Carol winces. "You looked yourself up, didn't you?" God, some of the shit they say about Tony on those sites. He probably read every single one of the comments.

Tony's smile is bleak. "Not at first. I asked Steve."

_And Steve just_ told _you?_ she almost asks. "Pretty sure he didn't tell you you were an asshole."

"No, that was the internet," Tony says. He blows out a breath, a long contemplative sigh. "I might have overheard a conversation you had with him last week."

Her mind skips to the day Steve was crying in her arms again, sobbing and telling her how he never wanted to be here, telling her how sorry he was about the war and how he can never apologize to Tony now, telling her that when he died, Tony must have hated him, and God, of all the awful things to have overheard. "You really weren't meant to hear that," she says.

"I'm aware. I also might have jumped to some erroneous conclusions." Tony's mouth quirks. "Did you know I wasn't dating Steve?"

The question comes out of nowhere. "I-- what?"

Oh, it's not like she's never wondered. It's not like they haven't all wondered, because, well, _Steve and Tony_. Anyone could see that they were basically gone for each other. The life of an Avenger lends itself to close friendships, but they were closer than pretty much anyone else, close enough that it was almost immaterial whether they were actually physically together, because they clearly loved each other. They would have died for each other. They _have_ died for each other. 

Avengers are gossipy nosy bastards, though, so there was always speculation. No one ever actually asked, that she knew of. Carol had eventually settled on _probably not together_ because, well, they'd never said they were, and Tony might be willing to hide but she's pretty sure everything about the idea of the closet is inimical to Steve and he'd be shouting it from the rooftops. So no. And then the war happened and she was honestly glad they hadn't been together, because she can only imagine how much worse it might have been.

"When I overheard you," Tony says, and he's still half-smiling, like something here is either funny or hideous, "you never mentioned that it was a war and I thought-- I thought it sounded like I'd broken up with him. Like we were dating."

Carol tries not to laugh, because it really isn't funny. God, it shouldn't be funny. It shouldn't. "And you weren't?"

"And we weren't," Tony confirms. "Which I found out. When I kissed him."

The bottom drops out of Carol's stomach. "Oh, God. You didn't."

It's a very Tony thing to do. He sees something he wants. He goes for it.

Tony looks away from her. He's still smiling, but the smile is pained. "Yeah," he says. "Yeah, I sure did." He shuts his eyes, and that's when Carol realizes he's crying, tears slowly trickling down his cheeks. "He turned me down. He said-- he said he used to want-- but not me, not now, I'm not the one he--"

Oh, Christ. Tony's words have dissolved into incoherent sobs, and when she puts a hand on his shoulder, he jumps.

"Easy," she says. "It's just me. Want a hug? I give great hugs."

She's the team's shoulder to cry on now, she guesses. Literally. Not that there's a team. After everything Steve and Tony have done for her, she can do this much for them. Tony sniffles and wraps his arms around her, turning his face into her neck. The armor is poking into her, little awkward bits of metal, and she doesn't think Tony can actually feel her with the suit on, so she slides her gloved hand up to stroke Tony's neck, to cup the back of his head, and Tony shudders and goes boneless, melting against her, like being a mile high and giving into the air currents.

She wonders if anyone's really touched Tony since this happened. He used to hug people all the time. He's probably starved for it.

So she pets his hair, and she lets him cry.

The sun shines down on them. Below them people are walking across the bridge, everyone going on with their own lives, the lives they all once swore to save. It looks like they have to save each other first.

After a while Tony lifts his head. His face is a disgusting mess, and she offers him the end of her sash, which he takes. Whatever. It washes.

"You feel better?"

Tony's voice is hoarse. "I feel like I can't cry anymore, if that's what you mean."

"You want to go home now?"

"Yeah," Tony says. "I want to go home."

But he doesn't move, and he's sitting there with the oddest expression on his tear-streaked face, like he's trying to decide whether he can trust her.

"Carol?" he asks, and the way he says her name now it almost sounds like he knows it.

"Yeah?"

"If I tell you something, can you keep it a secret?" He must see the look on her face, because he opens his mouth hastily and adds, "It's not anything bad, I swear, I'm not-- it's not going to be anything you'd regret knowing or anything you'd have to report, I just-- I need to ask someone, and I-- I don't think I can ask Steve."

She nods. "What's the matter?"

Tony swallows hard. "I-- I have dreams," he says. "You know the theory that dreaming is basically your brain trying to make sense of its neurotransmitters randomly firing? I have-- I have this idea that maybe my memories are still in here." He taps his temple. "Maybe I didn't delete and overwrite. Maybe I only deleted. Maybe all the data is still in here, like allocated memory without pointers. And I dream, but I don't know if-- if it's real--" He breaks off, and he's looking at her, wide-eyed.

They could have him back. God, they could have him back. He could _remember_.

Her mouth is dry. "What do you dream about?"

"A lot of things." His mouth twists. "I think for most people they'd be nightmares, some of them, but I think maybe some of them were real. There's one where-- where I'm on a boat or a sub, something like that -- it has a metal deck -- and there's a body in ice on a table."

It could be-- it could be-- but she wasn't there, and she doesn't know what it looked like when they found Steve. "Am I in them?" She realizes that that sounds a little self-centered. "I mean, if there's one with me I can tell you if it happened."

Tony nods. "You're there a lot. One I had a couple nights ago, I was sitting next to you in a cemetery. It was raining. Must have been a funeral. There was a guy talking at a podium, African-American guy. I don't know him. The dream kind of skipped around. I think we were pallbearers, you and me. And there was-- there was a statue." He frowns, like he thinks it's implausible enough that he could have made it up, and she knows exactly why.

Oh God. "Was it a statue of Captain America?"

The naked hope in Tony's eyes is terrifying. "It's _real_?"

"It was his funeral," Carol says, and now _she's_ crying. "It's real, Tony, you _remember_ \--"

But he's shaking his head. "I don't remember. It's like watching it on television. Like watching it happen to someone else. I can _see_ it, but it doesn't mean anything."

"But it's there! You can-- you can come up with a way to undelete it, right?" Tony's brain is a computer. They can do that with computers, can't they?

Tony's laugh is bitter. "My former self deleted the instructions, apparently. So I don't-- I don't know. Not sure I'll be able to figure out enough about it. He was smarter than I am, clearly. I just-- I wanted to know."

"Now you know," she says.

"Now I know," he echoes. "Thank you."

She stands up, and she offers him a hand. He takes it.

Together, they fly.

* * *

Steve comes home that evening, in his shiny new blue-and-white uniform. Commander Rogers. The job's official now, Carol supposes.

"Nice duds." Carol salutes him from the couch with her soda can, and then stands up. "Fancy."

Steve smiles; a weary, pro-forma smile, completely for show. "Same to you," he says, because she's still in uniform. "Was there Avengers business?"

"Nothing official." She smiles as she thinks of it. "I just went out for lunch with Tony. Wanted to look my best."

Tony didn't say she couldn't tell Steve that. Besides, all of New York will have seen him; that's not a secret she can keep.

"Went out for lunch with-- wait." Steve's mouth works. "With Tony? Has he even left the tower since he moved in?"

She wonders if Steve's jealous.

"I don't think so," she says. "But I think he had a good time, anyway. Mostly."

"Good, good," Steve says, and at least that sounds honest; he really does care about Tony. But that's not news to anyone. "Where'd you go for lunch?"

Carol grins wide. "Oh, it wasn't much," she says, nonchalantly. "Tony brought food. We sat on top of the Brooklyn Bridge and ate it."

Steve blinks a few times. His mouth opens and closes. "You flew."

"Yep."

"He flew."

"Yep." And then she can't keep going with the fake nonchalance and she's raising her hands to her face in excitement and Steve basically lunges at her and sweeps her up in a hug. "He flew," she says. "Steve, he-- he got in a suit and he flew and he _loved it_."

"Of course he loved it," Steve says, setting her down, and he's really smiling, and she hasn't seen him smile like that since before the war. "He's Tony."

"Yeah," she says. "Yeah, he definitely is."

**Author's Note:**

> I have [a Tumblr](http://sineala.tumblr.com/) and this story has [a post](http://sineala.tumblr.com/post/129954110849/fic-angle-of-attack).
> 
> The Thing's superhero poker tournament is in [The Thing vol. 2 #8](http://marvel.wikia.com/wiki/Thing_Vol_2_8), and it is a thing (ha!) of beauty.


End file.
